‘Emergency brake’ will ease concerns over veto loss, says Papandreou

Date: 22/05/03

By Dana Spinant

GREEK Foreign Minister George Papandreou is urging member states to give up their national veto in favour of qualified majority voting on EU foreign policy decisions.

However, he proposes that an "emergency brake" could still be applied where a member state felt a decision would be seriously detrimental to its national interests. This would differ slightly from a veto: instead of being blocked by ministers, a disputed decision would be referred to EU leaders for a final verdict.

Papandreou, the current president of the Council of Ministers, told European Voice that keeping the emergency brake was a price worth paying to convince member states to give up their veto on Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) issues. Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's praesidium on the future of Europe Convention is currently discussing whether the final verdict by EU leaders should be decided by qualified majority voting or unanimity.

José Manuel Durão Barroso, the Portuguese prime minister, gave firm backing to the plan yesterday (21 May). Barroso, in Brussels for talks with European Commission President Romano Prodi, said: "We have to introduce more qualified majority voting, but we know we will have to keep unanimity for some specific cases."

Papandreou concedes that the emergency brake could still lead to decisions being torpedoed by one member state. "But at least the bulk of decisions on CFSP would be taken by majority voting," he added.

The 13-strong praesidium, of which Papandreou is a member, is due to unveil a compromise proposal on the Union's external action, after more than 600 amendments were tabled to the initial text. The Greek minister hopes member states can agree on a coherent security strategy, which would allow the Union's leaders to "sit and discuss with the United States" about how to deal with the world's problems. Such a strategy would spell out how the Union tackles threats from weapons of mass destruction to SARS, said Papandreou.

Once the Union has a security doctrine of its own, it can start to bridge the gap with the US, he believes.

"I do not think the United States wants to go to war against the world. Our challenge is to say that we have tools, without excluding the use of force, to deal together with problems around the world. We need both soft and hard tools - because, as we see with Iraq, not all problems can be solved by force."

American-born Papandreou says he wants to breathe life into the faltering transatlantic relationship. The first step will be the US-EU summit in Washington on 25 June. "We would like the Thessaloniki summit [20-21 June] to produce a clear mandate on the line to be taken with President Bush," he said.

The Greek Foreign Minister has suggested that countris could be persudaed to give up the national veto if an 'emergency brake' was introduced whereby a disputed decision could be referred to EU leaders for a final decision.